231–240 of 419 posts
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A 'stock' that has no regulatory environment, either. But that's part of the draw.
Digital tulips, only tulip farming didn't consume the same amount of electricity as a small, South American country every year.
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There are many differences between the two, but one of the more obvious ones is that nobody is running around claiming that US dollars are a good investment.
I mean, the US does... every time the question of whether US bonds are worth it, the answer is always "sure, it's backed by the US government"
Around 20 years ago, I had the opportunity to listen to a member of Nasdaq top management talk about the stock market. It's all a _tiny_ bit blurry, being a long time ago, but I remember how he talked about three different perspectives for investing in stock: First, the "company perspective". An investor would buy stock in a company they believed in. Maybe they had good products, or good management, or something else…
So now I sell way OTM option contracts and make great consistent money. Sure a pro day trader might make more, but I make consistent money and with much less skill or accuracy required. And I still benefit from the rise in my underlying stocks as long as they don’t get assigned.
Only reason this isn’t more popular is because you really need high six figures or over a million in assets to start making income you can live off of. The amount of people with that much money in liquid assets is already small, and the portion of them willing to invest actively is even smaller, so very small target audience. Also, perhaps the current market environment lends itself better to selling options than it did in the past. I’m optimistic, but ready to accept this easy money could end someday.
The problem with the stock market is that you gamble on speculations. And you do so without any connection to the balance sheet of the company. Most of the shareholders are not the original shareholders, that means that they never invested a single penny to the company. They only paid speculators. And these speculators paid others etc.
Stock market is mostly* a glorified pump and dump scheme that looks for the greatest fool[1].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_fool_theory
*exluding the IPOs and issuing of new shares where actual money flows from the investors to the balance sheets of companies.
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You can buy drugs or a hitman online without being traced. Also ransomware can demand payment in Bitcoin without being traced.
Also, I can buy a pizza for a coworker in a different country without worrying about exchange rates or anything else. FYI, everything you said can be done with cold hard cash.
The BTC transfer fee is something like $20 now, more than the cost of a pizza, and the transaction might take like an hour to clear? Maybe it's fine if you don't mind overpaying, aren't too hungry, or you enjoy cold pizza.
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I’m undecided on Bitcoin. Happy to be called ignorant, but only if you can explain why. There are many ways of transferring money across the internet. Why is Bitcoin special if that’s the reason for its value? Genuinely want to be won over.
You can buy drugs or a hitman online without being traced. Also ransomware can demand payment in Bitcoin without being traced.
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Digital tulips, only tulip farming didn't consume the same amount of electricity as a small, South American country every year.
Things only have value because we agree they do. The US Dollar is backed by the full faith and trust in the government. "Faith and trust" is as much a digital tulip.
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Digital tulips, only tulip farming didn't consume the same amount of electricity as a small, South American country every year.
Things only have value because we agree they do. The US Dollar is backed by the full faith and trust in the government. "Faith and trust" is as much a digital tulip.
If bitcoin could solve those problems, and the energy usage problem, I’d use it. As is, it’s solved the double-spend problem - admirable and impressive, but it’s not a substitute for a stable currency yet.
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GameStop price spiked because of a short squeeze. Short squeeze happened because hedgefunds over extended in their short positions. Do you think GameStop was shorted more than float because of games learned by cryptocurrency traders? That’s a stretch.
It’s really interesting seeing how HN can be so uninformed when the topic changes to their area of expertise, this thread is insightful and I’ll use the search button to get an understanding of how many morons are on this forum, this is great for me as I’m not a coder and thought this crowd was ‘smart’.